life had been, small respecter of women as he was, he was shocked and
shamed. Knowing too, as he did, how absorbed he was in other things, he
was indignant, because not guilty.
“Do as you please, then,” he said shortly, and reentered the cabin. But
the next moment he saw his error in betraying an irritation that was
open to misconstruction. He came out again, scarcely looking at the
girl, who was lounging away.
“Do you want me to explain to you how the thing works?” he said
indifferently. “I can't show you unless a ship comes in.”
The girl's eyes brightened softly as she turned to him.
“Do tell me,” she said, with an anticipatory smile and flash of white
teeth. “Won't you?”
She certainly was very pretty and simple, in spite of her late speech.
Jarman briefly explained to her the movements of the semaphore arms and
their different significance. She listened with her capped head a little
on one side like an attentive bird, and her arms unconsciously imitating
the signs. Certainly, for all that she SPOKE like an American, her
gesticulation was Italian.
“And then,” she said triumphantly when he paused, “when the sailors see
that sign up they know they are coming in the harbor.”
Jarman smiled, as he had not smiled since he had been there. He
corrected this mistake of her eager haste to show her intelligence, and,
taking the telescope, pointed out the other semaphore,--a thin black
outline on a distant inland hill. He then explained how HIS signs were
repeated by that instrument to San Francisco.
“My! Why, I always allowed that was only the cross stuck up in the Lone
Mountain Cemetery,” she said.
“You are a Catholic?”
“I reckon.”
“And you are an Italian?”
“Father is, but mother was a 'Merikan, same as me. Mother's dead.”
“And your father is the fisherman yonder?”
“Yes,--but,” with a look of pride, “he's got the biggest boat of any.”
“And only you and your family are ashore here?”
“Yes, and sometimes Mark.” She laughed an odd little laugh.
“Mark? Who's he?” he asked quickly.
He had not noticed the sudden coquettish pose and half-affected
bashfulness of the girl; he was thinking only of the possibility of
detection by strangers.
“Oh, he is Marco Franti, but I call him 'Mark.' It's the same name, you
know, and it makes him mad,” said the girl, with the same suggestion of
archness and coquetry.
But all this was lost on Jarman.
“Oh, another Italian,” he said, relieved. She turned away a little
awkwardly when he added, “But you haven't told me YOUR name, you know.”
“Cara.”
“Cara,--that's 'dear' in Italian, isn't it?” he said, with a
reminiscence of the opera and a half smile.
“Yes,” she said a little scornfully, “but it means Carlotta,--Charlotte,
you know. Some girls call me Charley,” she said hurriedly.
“I see--Cara--or Carlotta Franti.”
To his surprise she burst into a peal of laughter.
“I reckon not YET. Franti is Mark's name, not mine. Mine is
Murano,--Carlotta Murano. Good-by.” She moved away, then stopped
suddenly and said, “I'm comin' again some time when the thing is
working,” and with a nod of her head, ran away. He looked after her;
could see the outlines of her youthful figure in her slim cotton
gown,--limp and clinging in the damp sea air, and the sudden revelation
of her bare ankles thrust stockingless into canvas shoes.
He went back into his cabin, when presently his attention was engrossed
by an incoming vessel. He made the signals, half expecting, almost
hoping, that the girl would return to watch him. But her figure was
already lost in the sand dunes. Yet he fancied he still heard the echoes
of her voice and his own in this cabin which had so long been dumb and
voiceless, and he now started at every sound. For the first time he
became aware of the dreadful disorder and untidiness of its uninvaded
privacy. He could scarcely believe he had been living with his stove,
his bed, and cooking utensils all in one corner of the barnlike room,
and he began to put them “to rights” in a rough, hard formality,
strongly suggestive of his convict experience. He rolled up his blankets
into a hard cylinder at the head of his cot. He scraped out his kettles
and saucepans, and even “washed down” the floor, afterwards sprinkling
clean dry sand, hot with the noonday sunshine, on its half-dried boards.
In arranging these domestic details he had to change the position of a
little mirror; and glancing at it for the first time in many days, he
was dissatisfied with his straggling beard,--grown during his voyage
from Australia,--and although he had retained it as a disguise, he at
once shaved it off, leaving only a mustache, and revealing a face from
which a healthier life and out-of-door existence had removed the last
traces of vice and dissipation. But he did not know it.
All the next day he thought of his fair visitor, and found himself often
repeating her odd remark that she was “not that kind of girl,” with a
smile that was alternately significant or vacant. Evidently she could
take care of herself, he thought, although her very good looks no doubt
had exposed her to the rude attentions of fishermen or the common drift
of San Francisco wharves. Perhaps this was why her father brought her
here. When the day passed and she came not, he began vaguely to wonder
if he had been rude to her. Perhaps he had taken her simple remark too
seriously; perhaps she had expected he would only laugh, and had found
him dull and stupid. Perhaps he had thrown away an opportunity. An
opportunity for what? To renew his old life and habits? No, no! The
horrors of his recent imprisonment and escape were still too fresh in
his memory; he was not safe yet. Then he wondered if he had not grown
spiritless and pigeon-livered in his solitude and loneliness. The next
day he searched for her with his glass, and saw her playing with one
of the children on the beach,--a very picture of child or nymphlike
innocence. Perhaps it was because she was not “that kind of girl” that
she had attracted him. He laughed bitterly. Yes; that was very funny;
he, an escaped convict, drawn towards honest, simple innocence! Yet he
knew--he was positive--he had not thought of any ill when he spoke to
her. He took a singular, a ridiculous pride in and credit to himself for
that. He repeated it incessantly to himself. Then what made her angry?
Himself! The devil! Did he carry, then, the record of his past life
forever in his face--in his speech--in his manners? The thought made
him sullen. The next day he would not look towards the shore; it was
wonderful what excitement and satisfaction he got out of that strange
act of self-denial; it made the day seem full that had been so vacant
before; yet he could not tell why or wherefore. He felt injured, but he
rather liked it. Yet in the night he was struck with the idea that she
might have gone back to San Francisco, and he lay awake longing for
the morning light to satisfy him. Yet when the fog cleared, and from
a nearer point, behind a sand dune, he discovered, by the aid of his
glass, that she was seated on the sun-warmed sands combing out her long
hair like a mermaid, he immediately returned to the cabin, and that
morning looked no more that way. In the afternoon, there being no sails
in sight, he turned aside from the bay and walked westward towards the
ocean, halting only at the league-long line of foam which marked the
breaking Pacific surges. Here he was surprised to see a little child,
half-naked, following barefooted the creeping line of spume, or running
after the detached and quivering scraps of foam that chased each other
over the wet sand, and only a little further on, to come upon Cara
herself, sitting with her elbows on her knees and her round chin in her
hands, apparently gazing over the waste of waters before her. A sudden
and inexplicable shyness overtook him. He hesitated, and stepped
half-hidden in a gully between the sand dunes.
As yet he had not been observed; the young girl called to the child and,
suddenly rising, threw off her red cap and shawl and quietly began to
disrobe herself. A couple of coarse towels were at her feet. Jarman
instantly comprehended that she was going to bathe with the child. She
undoubtedly knew as well as he did that she was safe in that solitude;
that no one could intrude upon her privacy from the bay shore, nor from
the desolate inland trail to the sea, without her knowledge. Of his
own contiguity she had evidently taken no thought, believing him safely
housed in his cabin beside the semaphore. She lifted her hands, and with
a sudden movement shook out her long hair and let it fall down her back
at the same moment that her unloosened blouse began to slip from her
shoulders. Richard Jarman turned quickly and walked noiselessly and
rapidly away, until the little hillock had shut out the beach.
His retreat was as sudden, unreasoning, and unpremeditated as his
intrusion. It was not like himself, he knew, and yet it was as perfectly
instinctive and natural as if he had intruded upon a sister. In the
South Seas he had seen native girls diving beside the vessels for coins,
but they had provoked no such instinct as that which possessed him now.
More than that, he swept a quick, wrathful glance along the horizon on
either side, and then, mounting a remote hillock which still hid him
from the beach, he sat there and kept watch and ward. From time to time
the strong sea-breeze brought him the sound of infantine screams and
shouts of girlish laughter from the unseen shore; he only looked the
more keenly and suspiciously for any wandering trespasser, and did not
turn his head. He lay there nearly half an hour, and when the sounds had
ceased, rose and made his way slowly back to the cabin. He had not gone
many yards before he heard the twitter of voices and smothered laughter
behind him. He turned; it was Cara and the child,--a girl of six or
seven. Cara's face was rosy,--possibly from her bath, and possibly
from some shame-faced consciousness. He slackened his pace, and as they
ranged beside him said, “Good-morning!”
“Lord!” said Cara, stifling another laugh, “we didn't know you were
around; we thought you were always 'tending your telegraph, didn't we,
Lucy?” (to the child, who was convulsed with mirth and sheepishness).
“Why, we've been taking a wash in the sea.” She tried to gather up her
long hair, which had been left to stray over her shoulders and dry in
the sunlight, and even made a slight pretense of trying to conceal the
wet towels they were carrying.
Jarman did not laugh. “If you had told me,” he said gravely, “I could
have kept watch for you with my glass while you were there. I could see
further than you.”
“Tould you see US?” asked the little girl, with hopeful vivacity.
“No!” said Jarman, with masterly evasion. “There are little sandhills
between this and the beach.”
“Then how tould other people see us?” persisted the child.
Jarman could see that the older girl was evidently embarrassed, and
changed the subject. “I sometimes go out,” he said, “when I can see
there are no vessels in sight, and I take ray glass with me. I can
always get back in time to make signals. I thought, in fact,” he said,
glancing at Cara's brightening face, “that I might get as far as
your house on the shore some day.” To his surprise, her embarrassment
suddenly seemed to increase, although she had looked relieved before,
and she did not reply. After a moment she said abruptly:--
“Did you ever see the sea-lions?”
“No,” said Jarman.
“Not the big ones on Seal Rock, beyond the cliffs?” continued the girl,
in real astonishment.
“No,” repeated Jarman. “I never walked in that direction.” He vaguely
remembered that they were a curiosity which sometimes attracted parties
thither, and for that reason he had avoided the spot.
“Why, I have sailed all around the rock in father's boat,” continued
Cara, with importance. “That's the best way to see 'em, and folks from
Frisco sometimes takes a sail out there just on purpose,--it's too sandy
to walk or drive there. But it's only a step from here. Look here!” she
said suddenly, and frankly opening her fine eyes upon him. “I'm going
to take Lucy there to-morrow, and I'll show you.” Jarman felt his cheeks
flush quickly with a pleasure that embarrassed him. “It won't take
long,” added Cara, mistaking his momentary hesitation, “and you can
leave your telegraph alone. Nobody will be there, so no one will see you
and nobody know it.”
He would have gone then, anyway, he knew, yet in his absurd
self-consciousness he was glad that her last suggestion had relieved him
of a sense of reckless compliance. He assented eagerly, when with a wave
of her hand, a flash of her white teeth, and the same abruptness she had
shown at their last parting, she caught Lucy by the arm and darted away
in a romping race to her dwelling. Jarman started after her. He had
not wanted to go to her father's house particularly, but why was SHE
evidently as averse to it? With the subtle pleasure that this admission
gave him there was a faint stirring of suspicion.
It was gone when he found her and Lucy the next morning, radiant with
the sunshine, before his door. The restraint of their previous meetings
had been removed in some mysterious way, and they chatted gayly as they
walked towards the cliffs. She asked him frankly many questions about
himself, why he had come there, and if he “wasn't lonely;” she answered
frankly--I fear much more frankly than he answered her--the many
questions he asked her about herself and her friends. When they reached
the cliffs they descended to the beach, which they found deserted.
Before them--it seemed scarce a pistol shot from the shore arose a high,
broad rock, beaten at its base by the long Pacific surf, on which a
number of shapeless animals were uncouthly disporting. This was Seal
Rock, the goal of their journey.
Yet after a few moments they no longer looked at it, but seated on the
sand, with Lucy gathering shells at the water's edge, they continued
their talk. Presently the talk became eager confidences, and
then,--there were long and dangerous lapses of silence, when both were
fain to make perfunctory talk with Lucy on the beach. After one of those
silences Jarman said:--
“Do you know I rather thought yesterday you didn't want me to come to
your father's house. Why was that?”
“Because Marco was there,” said the girl frankly.
“What had HE to do with it?” said Jarman abruptly.
“He wants to marry me.”
“And do you want to marry HIM?” said Jarman quickly.
“No,” said the girl passionately.
“Why don't you get rid of him, then?”
“I can't, he's hiding here,--he's father's friend.”
“Hiding? What's he been doing?”
“Stealing. Stealing gold-dust from miners. I never cared for him anyway.
And I hate a thief!”
She looked up quickly. Jarman had risen to his feet, his face turned to
sea.
“What are you looking at?” she said wonderingly.
“A ship,” said Jarman, in a strange, hoarse voice. “I must hurry back
and signal. I'm afraid I haven't even time to walk with you,--I must run
for it. Good-by!”
He turned without offering his hand and ran hurriedly in the direction
of the semaphore.
Cara, discomfited, turned her black eyes to the sea. But it seemed empty
as before, no sail, no ship on the horizon line, only a little schooner
slowly beating out of the Gate. Ah, well! It no doubt was there,--that
sail,--though she could not see it; how keen and far-seeing his
handsome, honest eyes were! She heaved a little sigh, and, calling Lucy
to her side, began to make her way homeward. But she kept her eyes on
the semaphore; it seemed to her the next thing to seeing him,--this man
she was beginning to love. She waited for the gaunt arms to move with
the signal of the vessel he had seen. But, strange to say, it was
motionless. He must have been mistaken.
All this, however, was driven from her mind in the excitement that she
found on her return thrilling her own family. They had been warned that
a police boat with detectives on board had been dispatched from San
Francisco to the cove. Luckily, they had managed to convey the fugitive
Franti on board a coastwise schooner,--Cara started as she remembered
the one she had seen beating out of the Gate,--and he was now safe from
pursuit. Cara felt relieved; at the same time she felt a strange joy
at her heart, which sent the conscious blood to her cheek. She was not
thinking of the escaped Marco, but of Jarman. Later, when the police
boat arrived,--whether the detectives had been forewarned of Marco's
escape or not,--they contented themselves with a formal search of the
little fishing-hut and departed. But their boat remained lying off the
shore.
That night Cara tossed sleeplessly on her bed; she was sorry she had
ever spoken of Marco to Jarman. It was unnecessary now; perhaps he
disbelieved her and thought she loved Marco; perhaps that was the reason
of his strange and abrupt leave-taking that afternoon. She longed for
the next day, she could tell him everything now.
Towards morning she slept fitfully, but was awakened by the sound of
voices on the sands outside the hut. Its flimsy structure, already
warped by the fierce day-long sun, allowed her through chinks and
crevices not only to recognize the voices of the detectives, but to hear
distinctly what they said. Suddenly the name of Jarman struck upon her
ear. She sat upright in bed, breathless.
“Are you sure it's the same man?” asked a second voice.
“Perfectly,” answered the first. “He was tracked to 'Frisco, but
disappeared the day he landed. We knew from our agents that he never
left the bay. And when we found that somebody answering his description
got the post of telegraph operator out here, we knew that we had spotted
our man and the L250 sterling offered for his capture.”
“But that was five months ago. Why didn't you take him then?”
“Couldn't! For we couldn't hold him without the extradition papers from
Australia. We sent for 'em; they're due to-day or to-morrow on the mail
steamer.”
“But he might have got away at any time?”
“He couldn't without our knowing it. Don't you see? Every time the
signals went up, we in San Francisco knew he was at his post. We had him
safe, out here on these sandhills, as if he'd been under lock and key in
'Frisco. He was his own keeper, and reported to us.”
“But since you're here and expect the papers to-morrow, why don't you
'cop' him now?”
“Because there isn't a judge in San Francisco that would hold him
a moment unless he had those extradition papers before him. He'd be
discharged, and escape.”
“Then what are you going to do?”
“As soon as the steamer is signaled in 'Frisco, we'll board her in the
bay, get the papers, and drop down upon him.”
“I see; and as HE'S the signal man, the darned fool”--
“Will give the signal himself.”
The laugh that followed was so cruel that the young girl shuddered. But
the next moment she slipped from the bed, erect, pale, and determined.
The voices seemed gradually to retreat. She dressed herself hurriedly,
and passed noiselessly through the room of her still sleeping parent,
and passed out. A gray fog was lifting slowly over the sands and sea,
and the police boat was gone. She no longer hesitated, but ran quickly
in the direction of Jarman's cabin. As she ran, her mind seemed to be
swept clear of all illusion and fancy; she saw plainly everything that
had happened; she knew the mystery of Jarman's presence here,--the
secret of his life,--the dreadful cruelty of her remark to him,--the man
that she knew now she loved. The sun was painting the black arms of the
semaphore as she toiled over the last stretch of sand and knocked
loudly at the door. There was no reply. She knocked again; the cabin was
silent. Had he already fled?--and without seeing her and knowing all!
She tried the handle of the door; it yielded; she stepped boldly into
the room, with his name upon her lips. He was lying fully dressed upon
his couch. She ran eagerly to his side and stopped. It needed only a
single glance at his congested face, his lips parted with his heavy
breath, to see that the man was hopelessly, helplessly drunk!
Yet even then, without knowing that it was her thoughtless speech which
had driven him to seek this foolish oblivion of remorse and sorrow,
she saw only his HELPLESSNESS. She tried in vain to rouse him; he
only muttered a few incoherent words and sank back again. She looked
despairingly around. Something must be done; the steamer might be
visible at any moment. Ah, yes,--the telescope! She seized it and swept
the horizon. There was a faint streak of haze against the line of sea
and sky, abreast the Golden Gate. He had once told her what it meant.
It WAS the steamer! A sudden thought leaped into her clear and active
brain. If the police boat should chance to see that haze too, and saw
no warning signal from the semaphore, they would suspect something. That
signal must be made, BUT NOT THE RIGHT ONE! She remembered quickly
how he had explained to her the difference between the signals for a
coasting steamer and the one that brought the mails. At that distance
the police boat could not detect whether the semaphore's arms were
extended to perfect right angles for the mail steamer, or if the left
arm slightly deflected for a coasting steamer. She ran out to the
windlass and seized the crank. For a moment it defied her strength; she
redoubled her efforts: it began to creak and groan, the great arms were
slowly uplifted, and the signal made.
But the familiar sounds of the moving machinery had pierced through
Jarman's sluggish consciousness as no other sound in heaven or earth
could have done, and awakened him to the one dominant sense he had
left,--the habit of duty. She heard him roll from the bed with an oath,
stumble to the door, and saw him dash forward with an affrighted face,
and plunge his head into a bucket of water. He emerged from it pale and
dripping, but with the full light of reason and consciousness in his
eyes. He started when he saw her; even then she would have fled, but he
caught her firmly by the wrist.
Then with a hurried, trembling voice she told him all and everything. He
listened in silence, and only at the end raised her hand gravely to his
lips.
“And now,” she added tremulously, “you must fly--quick--at once; or it
will be too late!”
But Richard Jarman walked slowly to the door of his cabin, still holding
her hand, and said quietly, pointing to his only chair:--
“Sit down; we must talk first.”
What they said was never known, but a few moments later they left the
cabin, Jarman carrying in a small bag all his possessions, and Cara
leaning on his arm. An hour later the priest of the Mission Dolores was
called upon to unite in matrimony a frank, honest-looking sailor and an
Italian gypsy-looking girl. There were many hasty unions in those days,
and the Holy Church was only too glad to be able to give them its
legal indorsement. But the good Padre was a little sorry for the honest
sailor, and gave the girl some serious advice.
The San Francisco papers the next morning threw some dubious light upon
the matter in a paragraph headed, “Another Police Fiasco.”
“We understand that the indefatigable police of San Francisco, after
ascertaining that Marco Franti, the noted gold-dust thief, was hiding on
the shore near the Presidio, proceeded there with great solemnity, and
arrived, as usual, a few hours after their man had escaped. But the
climax of incapacity was reached when, as it is alleged, the sweetheart
of the absconding Franti, and daughter of a brother fisherman, eloped
still later, and joined her lover under the very noses of the police.
The attempt of the detectives to excuse themselves at headquarters by
reporting that they were also on the track of an alleged escaped Sydney
Duck was received with the derision and skepticism it deserved, as it
seemed that these worthies mistook the mail steamer, which they should
have boarded to get certain extradition papers, for a coasting steamer.”
*****
It was not until four years later that Murano was delighted to recognize
in the husband of his long-lost daughter a very rich cattle-owner in
Southern California, called Jarman; but he never knew that he had been
an escaped convict from Sydney, who had lately received a full pardon
through the instrumentality of divers distinguished people in Australia.